Cellular networks are encountering exponential growth of Internet traffic, such as video traffic, web browsing traffic, and other data traffic that can be carried over the Internet. This exponential growth in Internet traffic has resulted in a rising cost of service delivery for cellular network operators, which, in some cases, has dampened profitability. As a result, many cellular network operators have at least begun to phase out unlimited data plans and to replace unlimited data plans with usage based billing plans, which can cap an amount of data traffic that can be used by a customer in a given billing period and/or charge per unit of data traffic used by a customer.
Given the increasing costs of data traffic communicated via cellular networks, wireless subscribers are often motivated to offload Internet traffic to lower cost networks, such as free wireless local area networks (WLANs), subscription based WLANs, and/or operator provided WLANs. In this regard, WLAN access is typically not predicated on usage based billing, so users can generally use WLANs without worrying about exceeding a data traffic cap.
Many wireless communication devices that are capable of operating on both cellular networks and WLANs are configured to aggressively offload Internet traffic to a WLAN, even when both WLAN radios and cellular radios are simultaneously active. However, a wireless communication device can only offload Internet traffic to a WLAN, if it has access to WLAN Internet service provided via the WLAN. Wireless communication devices frequently do not have appropriate credentials to access WLAN service at various hotspots, such as provided by hotels, on airplanes, in airports, and at restaurants, particularly when the user has not purchased WLAN service from the hotspot providers that offer the service for these hotspots or from associated roaming partners. This scenario in which a wireless communication device can be without credentials to access a WLAN can especially occur when users roam to foreign countries.